The present invention generally relates to automatic processing of electronic documents. The invention relates more specifically to automatically routing different portions or pages of a hybrid electronic document to different output devices.
Computers and output devices such as printers are now extensively used in word processing and other document management tasks. In the past, the most widely used output device for these applications has been a printer that produces output in a single color, normally black (xe2x80x9cmonochrome printerxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9csingle-color printerxe2x80x9d). Examples of monochrome printers include dot-matrix printers, daisy-wheel printers, and laser printers, such as the LP-M32 Series and the LP-M38 Series that are commercially available from Ricoh Corporation.
Recently, printers capable of printing a paper document in multiple colors (xe2x80x9ccolor printersxe2x80x9d) have become available. Generally, color printers can print in black, magenta, cyan, and yellow, or a combination of these colors. Thus, using color printers, a computer can print a document that includes both color and non-color pages.
For purposes of discussion in this document, xe2x80x9ccolor pagesxe2x80x9d of an electronic document are pages that contain printable objects, such as text or graphics, which are rendered in color and cannot be printed in color, accurately or efficiently on a monochrome printer. Conversely, xe2x80x9cnon-color pagesxe2x80x9d are pages that contain only objects that may be printed on a black and white printer. Thus, in this context, xe2x80x9ccolor pagesxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cnon-color pagesxe2x80x9d may be mutually exclusive.
By including color pages in a document, the effectiveness of the information that is contained within a document is significantly enhanced. For example, multiple colors can effectively communicate complex information, such as numeric data that is presented in a pie chart. Monochrome or black-and-white text, however, is easier to visually perceive and is known to result in less eye fatigue than color text.
Documents that include both color and non-color pages present an output processing problem, though, because the color pages cannot be printed using a black and white printer. When a monochrome printer is the only printer that is available in the user""s environment, the document cannot be printed.
To resolve this problem, documents that include both color and non-color pages can be routed to a color printer, which can then be used to print both the color and non-color pages. However, a drawback associated with using a color printer to print non-color pages is that the cost of printing pages on a color printer is generally significantly higher than the cost of printing pages on a black and white printer. For example, it is not uncommon for the cost of printing a non-color page on a color printer to be significantly greater than the cost of printing the non-color page on a black and white printer. Thus, by printing documents that contain both color and non-color pages on a color printer can significantly increase the cost of generating the document.
In addition, a black and white printer generally prints much faster than color printers of comparable cost. Thus, it is inefficient to print monochrome pages on a color printer.
These problems become more acute for documents that contain a small number of color pages in proportion to the black-and-white pages in the document. For example, it is not efficient or cost-effective to print a 100-page document on a color printer when only one page of the document contains color.
One method for reducing costs associated with printing a document that contains both color and non-color pages is to manually identify the color and non-color pages, and manually redirecting each page to either a color or black and white printer based on whether the particular page is a color or non-color page.
However, a drawback of this approach is that documents often contain a large number of pages. Many of these documents contain color and non-color pages that are mixed throughout the document. Thus, searching a large document to identify the color and non-color pages, and redirecting each page to either a color or black and white printer based on its contents, can be an inefficient and time-consuming task.
In addition, once the pages are printed on separate color or non-color printers, the pages must be manually merged back together to produce a single document. This is a tedious and time-consuming process. In addition, the process is prone to error as certain pages may unintentionally be inserted out of order.
The foregoing problems also exist with respect to output devices other than printers.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a method or mechanism that can automatically route pages of a document to a particular output device based on the characteristics or contents of each page.
In particular, there is a need for a method or mechanism that can automatically identify, in a electronic document that has both color pages and monochrome pages, each of the different kinds of pages and route each kind to a different compatible printer.
The foregoing needs and objects, and other needs and objects that will become apparent from the following disclosure, are fulfilled by the present invention, which comprises, in one aspect, a method for printing an electronic document that comprises a first set of pages and a second set of pages, in which the first set of pages has a first characteristic and the second set of pages has a second characteristic, the method comprising identifying the first set of pages and the second set of pages within the electronic document based on the contents of the document; selecting a first output device that is compatible with the first characteristic; selecting a second output device that is compatible with the second characteristic; and routing the first set of pages to the first output device and the second set of pages to the second output device.
One feature of this aspect is that identifying the first set of pages and the second set of pages comprises identifying one or more tokens that identify the first set of pages; scanning the document to locate an instance of the tokens; and identifying a page of the document that contains the instance of the tokens. Another feature is that selecting the first output device comprises selecting a first printing device based on the contents of the first set of pages. A related feature is that selecting the second output device comprises selecting a second printing device based on the contents of the second set of pages.
According to another feature, the method further involves receiving a print request that includes one or more print parameters that identify how the first and second sets of pages are to be determined. Another feature is generating page-ordering information that identifies a particular ordering of pages from said first set of pages and said second set of pages, and defines how to order the pages after the pages are output by the first and second output devices.
In another feature, generating page-ordering information comprises the steps of generating an identifier page that includes the page-ordering information; and routing the additional page to the first output device and to the second output device. A related feature is that generating page-ordering information includes generating one or more bar codes that encode the page-ordering information, and outputting an identifier page that contains the bar codes on the first output device before the first set of pages.
According to still another feature, scanning each page of the document includes identifying a Page Description Language (PDL) in which the document is formatted; selecting a parser that corresponds to the PDL used for the document; and parsing the document using the PDL parser. A related feature involves determining whether the PDL of the document can be output by the first and second output devices; and translating the document into a PDL format that can be output by the first and second output devices.
In another feature, the routing step comprises routing the first set of pages to a color printer; and routing the second set of pages to a monochrome printer. Still another feature involves receiving a print request that identifies the tokens. A related feature is that receiving the print request includes receiving printing device information that identifies a first printer to be used for printing pages that include the tokens and a second printer device to be used for printing pages that do not include the tokens. Still another feature involves merging the first set of pages and the second set of pages into a merged document, after the first and second sets of pages are output, and using the page-ordering information.
According to another aspect, the invention provides a method for automatically printing a document that comprises a first set of pages that are compatible only with a first printer and a second set of pages that are compatible only with a second printer, the method comprising identifying the first set of pages within the document based on one or more first commands that the first set of pages is directed to the first printer; identifying the second set of pages within the document based on one or more second commands that the second set of pages is directed to the second printer; and routing said first set of pages to the first printer and said second set of pages to the second printer.
Yet another aspect provides a method for automatically printing a document that comprises one or more monochrome pages and one or more color pages, the method comprising identifying the color pages within the document based on one or more color commands of a PDL that identify the color pages; identifying the monochrome pages within the document; routing the color pages to a color printer; and routing the monochrome pages to a monochrome printer. A feature of this aspect involves generating one or more identifier pages that identify the color pages and that identify a position of the color pages within the document. Yet another feature is routing the identifier pages and the color pages to the color printer concurrently. Still another feature involves automatically merging the monochrome pages and the color pages into a merged document after all pages are printed.
In other aspects, the invention encompasses a computer apparatus, a computer-readable medium, and a carrier wave configured to carry out the foregoing steps.